


Cominghome

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-27
Updated: 2004-12-27
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Justin always comes back; a post-season four drabble, for "peggin"; named after a reference in Megan McCafferty's "Sloppy Firsts"/"Second Helpings" books.





	Cominghome

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

_Your vicarious existence, it's a danger to us all / The way you sleepwalk through your life in a pixilated thrall._ \-- "In Your Name", Kevin McCalix

* * *

The first time Justin comes back to Brian, he's met with gloomily guarded features and a shitload of memories he's not entirely sure he wants to remember. He sees Brian, for the first time, in real pain, and while the childish part of him is smug that it's pain over the thought of having nearly lost *him*, the rest of him just wants to wrap his arms around Brian's barely-quaking shoulders and promise him that everything will be all right and mean it.

The second time Justin comes back to Brian, he has to fight his way through a web of his own deceit. The leaving part was easy enough, and he's long decided that he won't feel guilty about that because Brian wouldn't have wanted him to not-leave if he were miserable, and he was. Ethan made him feel special (again?), and for a while, Justin's able to tune out everything else to focus on his own happiness. But then he's not happy, and suddenly, everything aches with the reality of Brian not being there. So Justin meets him halfway, and even though it probably looks like a cop-out to all of Brian's (their) friends, it's the first time in months that everything has felt all right.

Justin comes back to Brian a third time against Brian's will, both of them kicking and screaming the entire way. "I don't want you here," Brian says flat-out, but the things Brian does and says are on completely separate planes of existance, and Justin has known that since day one. Roughly an hour and a bowl of soup later, and Brian concedes, too tired to argue and not really wanting to anyways. And as Justin strokes his sweat-dampened hair and watches Brian murmur something unintelligible in his sleep, he realizes that it's different, that the third time's a charm, and that the next time he has to leave Brian, there will be an unspoken agreement that he'll come back. Not that everything will be all right, per se, but that neither of them will be facing it alone.

Justin has to leave Brian a fourth time to go to Hollywood, and the thought of stolen weekends in hotel rooms and steady e-mail correspondence for six months both excites and terrifies him. Everything will be all right, he tells himself at the airport, and he tries to convince himself that Brian only looks a little rough around the edges because they were out celebrating at Babylon until the wee hours of the morning, but in truth, he knows that Brian's just not as alive without Justin around, and that even though Kinnetik will continue to soar and Gus will grow bigger and the rest of Justin's Pittsburgh family will go about their own lives while he's away, nothing's ever quite as good as the real thing.

"I love you," he tells Brian simply and honestly when his plane is getting ready to board. He presses his nose into Brian's neck and inhales deeply, wanting the scent to fall back on when the glitz and glamour of Hollywood just isn't enough to keep the sparkle in his eyes.

Brian's own eyes are glistening now, too. "Don't be a stranger," he says, and Justin knows that, in Kinneyspeak, that's as good as an, I know you'll come back to me, anyday.


End file.
